The Key to Baking Success When You Already Have the Ingredients
TO ANY HARDWORKING/TALENTED INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE STRUGGLING TO GET THEIR STARTUP/SMALL BUSINESS OFF THE GROUND. HERE'S WHY:
If you find yourself in a position where you're a new startup/small business owner & are working your ass off with research, promo, marketing, etc. and yet you are yielding little to no success -- the solution is simple. It's a matter of HAMMERING these two words into your brain and making sure you don't ever forget them.
They are your philosophy. Your Bible/Torah/Quran. Your modus operandi & sole methodology / philosophy for building a successful business (beit goods or services) is simply a matter of not getting distracted & remembering these 2 things:
-1) PRIORITIZE
-2) ORGANIZE
Now assuming all other varaibles are in place -- i.e. HARD WORK / INTELLECT (with hard work being vastly the most important quality) though this is not a post on what qualities one needs to build a successful business, but rather one on WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE SPENDING ALL YOUR TIME/MONEY WORKING YOUR ASS OFF TRYING TO BUILD A STARTUP/NEW BUSINESS AND YOU CAN'T GET OFF THE GROUND. FOR THOSE WHO NEED A LIFT:
FIRST GET YOUR PRIORITIES IN CHECK!
SECONDLY MAKE SURE YOU STAY ORGANIZED!
For college kids -- you got a midterm coming up? Maybe think about putting off that trip to the club. There's always next week.
For post-graduate individuals with no capital -- this is byfar the hardest part of starting a business. Without capital -- you are the sole entity responsible for the failure / success of your enterprise. There's a reason why PRIORITIZE / ORGANIZE is listed in that order.
BECAUSE PRIORITIZING YOUR SHIT-TO-DO LIST FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT IS WITHOUT QUESTION MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN ORGANIZING....THOUGH BOTH ARE QUINTESSENTIAL.
You can always hire an administrative assistant/secretary. This is why its hardest for those without the capital -- as just until you can acquire enough to get the funding you need to get your business up and running; you'll have no choice but to assume this role on your own.
Having yourself an organized roadmap/marketing / whitepaper/marketing/business MO. etc. on a quarterly basis -- you could schedule it down to the very minute. It DOES NOT mean you are in the clear.
Care to Elaborate?
Whether you're writing source code for your own software/app/token, or you're running your own business restaurant -- in both cases you're going to have to get shit done.
For say a restaurant you might need to pickup A,B,C, and draft a menu then pitch the menu & network/acquire funding while meeting with venture capitalists. For the startup -- you may need a host domain, more bandwidth, etc. If you're like me and work 24/7 (or 16-18 hours a day) then focus on what needs needs to be done by creating a "vision board" or a roadmap and not a business one -- a personal one.
What DO you mean by "personal roadmap?"
- It's not rocket science. You take a vision board -- put everything you want accomplished. Create a list, start with annual goals. Then quarterly. Then weekly. Then daily. Hourly, etc. Draft your "to do" list. Then you work your way backwards: this time starting with hourly - annually.
- If you're like me you're probably all over the place. Bringing a product/service that is mult-faceted & comprehensive is not easy to do. Though some of us i.e. (yours truly) are stubborn to a fault and think everything can be done alone.
Unless you're planning on doing crystal meth or popping those "limitless" pills -- it's not going to happen.
So start by what needs to be done in order from most to least important. Do what you can only do during weekdays (Mon-Fri) business hours first & do them in the order of importance.
You'll also run into things that you realize are counter-productive. If you have a problem with being too intensely focused on whatever it is you do -- just as I am with this very article; which I promised myself would take 25 mins; and has already been working on for 43mins now.
IT IS EXCEEDINGLY DIFFICULT AND MUCH EASIER THAN IT LOOKS TO maintain priorities & the fact that I am literally contradicting myself right now makes such a case self-evident.
YOU'RE A MAMMAL! I was going to say "youre only human" but to say "youre a mammal" is perhaps more indicative & helpful for it provides the imagery that you are incapable of doing everything.
It's times like this I think to that cartoon anime "dragonball Z" (if you're a milennial, you know what I'm talking about) and I can't tell you how many times I wish I had that "Hyperbolic Time Chamber" (where you'd enter a training facility fully stocked with food/supplies/whatever you need for an entire year -- and while 24 hours passes on Earth, 365 x 24 pass in the chamber. After one whole day you come out the chamber and it's been a year for you while a day for everyone else. I know it's a silly analogy -- but I bet all of us wish we had one.
There's simply no disputing that out of every commodity on earth-- time is the most priceless luxury that exists. Time is something that Buffet himself would go all-in on if it were a stock / equity / bond & he'd do it on an options trade with an impossible deadline/impossible target & even if it had a 1% chance of success -- we've seen it all the time in scyfy movies. Time = most valuable commodity in life.
I'm 29 now. When I was in my early twenties, it was easy to feel like I'd never die and that my life would exist forever. I'd encourage you to listen to David. Foster Wallace's "This is Water" keynote speech at Kenyon College. It is absolutely life-changing, epiphany inducing material.
!
By escaping your "Default Setting" as Wallace puts it, you're able to transcend beyond your own immediate, selfish, narrow minded tunnel vision of life & your thoughts, feelings, emotions are sidelined as you become fully cognizant of things you never thought you'd notice before.
Ever see the movie "Paterson?" about the bus driver? The director was a huge fan of Wallace -- in the film you can see Infinite Jest on Paterson's bookshelf. What is especially unique about this film is that most individuals go into the film starting it thinking it's a movie about him. I mean afterall, he's being filmed, we're seeing his life on loop from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to bed. over and over and over again.
Paterson is not a movie about the bus driver. It's about everyone around him. This is where director Jim Jarmusch was quite brilliant in his scene-by-scene capture of creating not only a fascinating, but thought-provoking and insightful motion picture drama.
The movie’s protagonist, played with spectacular attention to detail and what feels like a genuine sense of affinity by Adam Driver, is named Paterson, and he drives a New Jersey Transit bus around the New Jersey city of Paterson, where he also lives. Paterson, New Jersey was once an industrial center of the United States—a storied manufacturer of silks and textiles—that fell into a kind of ruin by the time this film reviewer moved there, to live, in 1978." -ROTTEN TOMATOES critic review.
Back to the point I was making. Oh right. Prioritize !!
With that being said. I've got a slew of things to do before the bell rings & business day ends a half hour later. So on that note; I'll post this for now, perhaps delete & repost later..but don't want to draft it as I do get carried away and while I love writing opeds that help people better themselves, it doesn't pay my bills! :) So best of luck to you.
Remember it makes no difference how good you are at prioritizing and organizing your life if you are incapable of working hard or incapable of maintaining discipline/optimism. The Law of Attraction does exist and it's not a silly fairy tale. SO on that note:
- WORK HARD.
- BE SMART. READ. LEARN. STAY INFORMED.
- PRIORITIZE. ORGANIZE. NEVER GIVE UP.
WHAT i REFER TO AS "lose yourself" moments (yes, the Eminem song) will come by & its a matter of probability & statistics. Yes there is an element of luck to everyone's success -- but notice how successful people are generally hardworking. It's not a coincidence. They got their lucky break though failing.
OVER AND OVER AND OVER....
Simply by reducing the statistical chance for success -- in what seems (at the time) like an exercise in futility; that dark tunnel midway through stages of your startup.
I wish you all the very best. As cliche as it sounds; they exist for a reason, YOU CAN DO whatever you set your mind to. SO GO out and do it. THOUGH never forget:
PRIORITIZE
ORGANIZE
Peace & Love ! ☮️💜
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